Oliver Twist (Penguin Classics S.) - Softcover

Dickens' second novel is a compelling portrait of the clash between the innocence of childhood and a dark criminal underworld inhabited by a vivid cast of wicked or compromised characters. This new edition aims to place this mythical story of the struggle between good and evil firmly within the context of the early Victorian attitudes to crime and its punishment, and Dickens' own evolution as a novelist.

Charles Dickens (1812-70) was a political reporter and journalist whose popularity was established by the phenomenally successful Pickwick Papers (1836-7). His novels captured and held the public imagination over a period of more than thirty years. Philip Horne is a Reader in English at University College London. He is author of the acclaimed 'Henry James: A Life in Letters' and editor of James' The Tragic Muse for Penguin.